It’s a good time for us to share one of our more “controversial” grows this year. We grew tobacco for the very first time and it’s coming right along!
We’ve plenty of experience growing this plant’s flowering varieties, nicotiana. That’s been a lovely flower that we’ve really enjoyed growing. So, it seemed natural to also try our hand at the “real deal” so to speak. And it has not disappointed, it’s a really cool plant!
As amateur botanists, we don’t always look at a harvest as the only possible outcome when it comes to a growing experience. Sometimes the endpoint is just purely knowledge. We don’t even know if we’ll actually use this crop. But, we did want to know if one could grow tobacco in far northern and subarctic climates. We also figured that might be of interest to some of our fellow readers!
We did start to get concerned a couple weeks ago as the lower parts of the plant were really starting to yellow. We’re growing this in “production status,” so that means we’re fueling it with NPK and at least are “trying” to get a well grown plant. Apparently this is a totally normal thing to see with tobacco, the plant basically starts shifting nitrogen loads up to the upper leaves to fuel further growth. Which causes lower leaves to become yellow, this is also a sign of plant maturity.
We did think that maybe we would try to make some bitters out of the crop. Or maybe try our hand at rolling a home grown cigar. But, as we’ve looked into the drying and curing processes for tobacco, we have to admit that we’re a little bit intimidated. This ain’t Kentucky where we can dry things out and cure them in a barn! We’ll probably do a “best effort” thing and hang the leaves in our indoor grow tent for a month or two to see what happens.
One of the things I was thankful to learn was that it’s very important to wear gloves when harvesting this crop. Apparently the nicotine in the leaves can be in such a concentration that it can be a bit risky to harvest without protection. That’s not a precaution I’m used to taking with plants, so shout out to whomever it was I picked that tip up from!
As for growing notes? We’ve found it valuable to treat this crop similar to other “high intake” crops like tomatoes and peppers. It benefits from constant NPK. It also seems to prefer a constant moisture contact environment like we get from sub irrigation. We also have a plant in a fabric grow bag and it’s half the size of these monsters. It also really prefers warmer soils like we get in our dark containers, but that’s probably expected out of a “southern” crop. We’re just barely starting to observe early flowering at 60 days with our most advanced plants, we could see it taking 90+ days with less optimal growing conditions.
We’re expecting to be able to harvest this crop any day now, but we’re going to let it go a little bit longer to see what else we can learn. I’ve gathered we need to wait until we see decent yellowing across most of the plant, but also before it starts to dry on the stalk. Anyway, it’s been an interesting experience and we figured some of you might also have your curiosity peaked!
